Monday, August 18, 2008

Must reading from today's Wall St. Journal...Obama on Clarence ThomasAugust 18, 2008

Barack Obama likes to portray himself as a centrist politician who wants to unite the country, but occasionally his postpartisan mask slips. That was the case at Saturday night's Saddleback Church forum, when Mr. Obama chose to demean Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Pastor Rick Warren asked each Presidential candidate which Justices he would not have nominated. Mr. McCain said, "with all due respect" the four most liberal sitting Justices because of his different judicial philosophy.

Mr. Obama took a lower road, replying first that "that's a good one," and then adding that "I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he, I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution." The Democrat added that he also wouldn't have appointed Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job.

So let's see. By the time he was nominated, Clarence Thomas had worked in the Missouri Attorney General's office, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second most prominent court. Since his "elevation" to the High Court in 1991, he has also shown himself to be a principled and scholarly jurist.

Meanwhile, as he bids to be America's Commander in Chief, Mr. Obama isn't yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note of his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a "community organizer" and law school lecturer. Justice Thomas's judicial credentials compare favorably to Mr. Obama's Presidential résumé by any measure. And when it comes to rising from difficult circumstances, Justice Thomas's rural Georgian upbringing makes Mr. Obama's story look like easy street.

Even more troubling is what the Illinois Democrat's answer betrays about his political habits of mind. Asked a question he didn't expect at a rare unscripted event, the rookie candidate didn't merely say he disagreed with Justice Thomas. Instead, he instinctively reverted to the leftwing cliché that the Court's black conservative isn't up to the job while his white conservative colleagues are.

So much for civility in politics and bringing people together. And no wonder Mr. Obama's advisers have refused invitations for more such open forums, preferring to keep him in front of a teleprompter, where he won't let slip what he really believes.

In the 1990s, I videotaped a motivational talk on a local independent television station by former U.S. soccer great Kyle Rote Jr. called "Pursuing Your Goals Without Forsaking Your Values". It includes a combination of business, sports, and Christian faith. After many years in the "VHS vault", I finally figured out how to get it "web"-ified. Below are the seven parts of the talk. Enjoy!

Criticizing the Author and Not the CandidateBy Mark R. Levin on National Review Online

If you read the criticism of the Jerome Corsi book that is picking up speed in the liberal media, you will find much similarity and overlap. The Obama campaign's effort to feed talking points to the media is having some effect. However, it is also feeding curiosity about the author and the book, thereby helping to maintain strong sales.

It's too bad the same media that are so concerned about Corsi's background have been so reticent to do their own homework on Obama. After all, Corsi wrote a book, Obama seeks the presidency. The liberal media were slow to acknowledge the existence of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, and did so only after talk radio and bloggers would not let Obama escape his close relationship with both. The Chicago media did most of the heavy lifting respecting Obama's relationship with Tony Rezko. And there are many other miscreants and radicals who have played large roles in Obama's personal and professional life. But the liberal media are not interested in looking into most of it, have begrudgingly and superficially addressed it usually after the new media pressed it, and then downplayed it as "guilt by association" — with few exceptions. Not so with their reporting on Corsi. They want to know about anything he has ever said or written and his associations. In his case, they are determinative. And if he got a date wrong here and there in his book, or was otherwise mistaken in some minor way, the entirety of his book is discredited. We are "learning" more about Corsi than we learned about Obama prior to the all important Super Tuesday primaries.

It is not surprising that the media have chosen sides, but it remains frustrating. And this was a frustration of the Clinton campaign and will be for the McCain campaign. Meanwhile, the New York Times had no second thoughts about smearing John McCain on its front page with the thinnest of accusations inferring an affair and unethical lobbying activity. I think it can be said with some confidence that Corsi's standards are superior to those of the Times.

I think Roger Kimball has it about right here. And it should be emphasized that David Freddoso's excellent book on Obama has been all but ignored by the liberal media, but is well worth purchasing.

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